I Don't Care
by peace1089
Summary: Take a homeless alien, a persistent human, a few awful situations, and a missing pet fish and what do you get? A mildly angsty love story with more than a few surprises thrown into the melting pot.
1. Fear

It was raining. Of course it _had_ to be raining. He **hates** rain. He hurt from head to toe, his jacket stank to high heavens, his stomach was gnawing on itself (hell, what he'd give for that stale cracker-bread right now), he was dirty, and his feet had only just scabbed over. All of this, plus the rain, equaled a very, very unhappy blue alien. Not to mention the fact that his sole friend was gone and he'd given his umbrella to a pathetic looking (even more so than him) homeless man. He. Was. Miserable. But miserable was better than imprisoned or dead. He was currently scrunched up in a damp, mold smelling cardboard box facing the street. He liked to have his back covered. He had his stringy arms wrapped around his knees and his bulbous cerulean head resting in the tiny gap between the crest of each knee. Of course, his mind was still whirring at a thousand miles a minute, which may seem adrenaline fueled, but for him, it was just normal. All of those miles were directed toward his friend. Minion. He felt horrible for leaving him in _Their _hands, but he would have been killed if Minion had not insisted on him running on without him.

He was surprised he even noticed when a woman walked past the alley he cowered in. The fact that it was very, very late at night probably made her more noticeable and made him quite worried for her. He'd only just turned his mind back to Minion when another figure passed by. This one, however, made him shiver. In the brief moment the shadow had been in his sight, the body language of whomever it was clearly stated "I am up to no good." His blood ran cold in his veins- which was odd for him because he was usually quite warm. His instincts told him to leave it alone, but something else, something much, much louder shouted at him to follow. So he crawled out of his box, doing his best to ignore his creaky joints, achy muscles, and shredded feet. Before he had even reached the end of the alley, he heard a blood curdling scream that sent him into full panic mode. He already let one person get hurt when he could have done something and he was **not** going to sit by and let it happen again. Even if it was a stranger.

He raced down the sidewalk, adrenaline making the pain in his feet vanish instantly. He saw the shadow at the end of the street and he stretched himself to run faster. The shadow hovered over the woman he had seen and he was close enough that he could hear her sobbing. He didn't slow down at all and slammed his shoulder into the man and kicked him in the jewels. While he was down, he yanked the man's belt out of his belt loops and twisted it dexterously around his wrists and ankles. Once he was finished with that, he finally heard the woman sniffling. He was a bit surprised she'd pulled herself together so quickly- most people would likely be sobbing like a newborn. She looked up at him with wide blue eyes. He couldn't help it- he was terrified. He went sprinting back to his little box, never looking over his shoulder. He might've helped a human, but that doesn't mean she wouldn't hurt him. It'd happened before.

Roxanne stood there in shock, watching…. It? Him? Run away. She stared at his back until he vanished from her sight, melting back into the night as if he'd never even been there. Her attacker let out a little groan on the ground, which broke her out of her trance-like state. She glared and kicked him in the goods again for good measure. Then, she whipped out her cell phone and called the police while her eyes drifted back to where the blue creature had run. This was one of the weirdest nights of her life. She refrained from telling the police about it, since they wouldn't believe her any way and… she got the feeling that it didn't want to be found.

It was pushing five am when she finally got dropped off by a pleasant police officer at the stoop of her apartment complex. She waved her thanks to him, and trudged up the stairs lethargically. Her mind zapped all of the energy from her body because it was racing and her curiosity would not let her stop thinking about who saved her. When she finally unlocked her front door and literally fell onto her couch, she immediately closed her eyes and conjured up the blue person's image. Apart from the startling blue, it had huge, wide green eyes and a black goatee. Okay, a man, then, she thought. He looked like a deer caught in a monster truck's headlights or a bunny about to be mauled by a bear. He scampered off like one too. He was wearing a shoddy, ratty jacket, and had no shoes.

That made Roxanne feel very, very guilty. She should have gone after him. He saved her from that monster, after all. The least she could have done was help him… it's not like she was going to do anything with her ex's stuff anyway (besides burn it or donate it, anyway). She could have given him clothes and shoes and….

Before she even realized it, she was fast asleep on her couch, dreaming of those huge green eyes.

He got no sleep that night. He was paranoid. Every little noise made him jump halfway out of his box. He kept expecting for someone to find him and…. well, he wasn't quite sure what they'd do, but if they were anything like _Them_, he'd be dead before he could scream. At least the fear made the rest of his problems seem small. Hunger, stench, cold, and dampness was nothing- **nothing- **compared to what he feared. His experiences with humans left much to be desired. He hadn't associated with a _decent _human being in seven years. He shivered when dawn approached, but not from the cold, oh no; he shivered from fear- daytime made him more vulnerable to be seen. He turned his body away from the first rays of sunlight and tried to think about happy memories to help him cope. He passed out from exhaustion well after the morning rush hour and slept until the sun hung low in the sky once more.


	2. My Name Is

Roxanne went about her day as usual, though it felt more like going through the motions because her thoughts were constantly elsewhere throughout the day. Guilt weighed heavier and heavier on her shoulders, until it felt like she was carrying a boulder on her back. By the time she'd left her day job, she'd made up her mind to try to find the guy who saved her from that monster. Though that proved to be harder than she thought. She traced her steps back to a five block perimeter in each direction. Each block had several alleyways, however, and it was getting dark faster than she realized. She, being a reasonable woman with common sense, knew not to make the same mistake_ twice;_ so she started for home with resolve to finish her search in the morning.

He awoke with a start.

"Shit." He'd often heard this term come from _Their_ mouths when he messed with their heads and once when he was much younger and bit one of them. He never repeated that because the punishment was far too severe to make it worth it. He hadn't meant to fall asleep, especially not in the way he had. His neck, knees, bottom, and back ached from the cold dampness as well as the fact that he had stayed in this position. His arms were still wrapped around his knees and his poor, slender neck had to support his rather large head for the several hours he'd wasted. He turned toward the opening of his little box and unfolded his legs, stretching and cracking his sore joints in the process. The sun was still a few hours away from setting and as such, he decided not to move until very, very few people passed the corridor in which he sat. He really wanted to move. His lanky muscles begged for it. But his mind had a vice around his impulses. He would not make Minion's sacrifice be in vain. He tried to swallow the rock forming in his chest as his eyes pricked with water- water! Not tears! He missed that fish. More than he would even admit to himself. Minion had been the one thing that kept him safe and sane for so long. Without him, he'd have been dead or gone on a killing spree long ago.

Minion had been good for him. Minion helped him work on his impulse control. Once upon a time, he'd not been very bright when it came to knowledge of what _They_ would do to him for something as small as talking when he'd not been spoken to. When he'd first gotten there, he had been a smart ass with no regard for his own safety or Their rules. He'd constantly insulted their puny brains and their mediocre researching abilities. He'd fought back and been a feisty little alien until they figured out how to control him. They made everything he did wrong unbearable with harsh punishments and threatened Minion to obtain his cooperation. From then on, he'd rebelled in much smaller ways. He'd give them a false piece of information or work their brains over with his superior psychological knowledge.

He'd only thought to try to get away very recently. They'd started doing physical tests on him- painful ones- and threatened to do the same to Minion if he uttered a sound. So while they prodded him with needles and made his whole body twist and burn with agony, he was silent, with his face wrenched and tears constantly pouring from his eyes- blinded or not. Yes, for a time, they'd made him blind- just to see how he'd adapt. They thought it'd be permanent. They had poured acid into his eyes and only washed it out when it threatened to eat into his brain. Wanted to preserve the goods, after all. His tear ducts had still worked, however.

His physiology, however, had other plans and he'd had a brand new set of eyes in four months. Once, they had been his father's gentle brown irises; now, they were an acid green. He knew that if they found out he could see again they'd poke and prod his eyeballs too and lord knows he still had the memory of his eyes melting in their sockets burned into his brain. That was one procedure he could not mute himself for. Someone in their group had a tiny bit of mercy still left in their shriveled, black heart, and allowed him that one screw up. He still shuddered to think what would have happened if they'd done that to Minion as well. The little guppy had been his eyes for those four blind months and he relied heavily on him, even after he could see again. He'd had to pretend for another few months that his eyes were still empty sockets. It wasn't until he'd escaped that he saw how his eyes had changed. The bones around his eyes had been widened from the acid as well and now his eyes were absolutely enormous. Before, his face had looked very similar to a human's. After all of the experiments, however… he was horrified to look at himself. His jaw had become unnaturally narrow, his nose bumpy from when they'd broken it. His eyes were his most prominent feature now.

Other humans would likely say he looked like a big, sad alien baby. He'd retained his perfect skin (how the acid had not left scars, he knew not) and his wide forehead combined with his round eyes really did make him look quite young. However, his gauntness from malnutrition and exertion had pressed hollows under his high cheekbones and thinned him out to extreme proportions. He was meant to have more calories than a human, not less, and his single digit body fat percentage showed that. He knew he had to eat soon or else he'd likely pass out again and never wake up. His body was using even more energy than before to keep him warm, and he was likely already in ketosis. The next step would be to waste away his thin muscles and he'd be dead within a few days. So as soon as it began to get darker, he made sure his face was hidden and his hands were covered with the thin, stained gloves, and came out of the alley in search of sustenance. He was lucky that most humans didn't notice things like feet, and even if they did, they frowned and pitied him because they thought he had hypothermia and would likely lose those feet very soon. They were blue, after all.

Fate had a different plan for Roxanne, however, and just as she was about to get in a cab to go home, she spotted him. She knew it **had** to be him. Besides her intuition shouting at her, he was covering his face and his feet were blue. Most people, she knew, would likely brush that off as the cold, but they were way too blue to just be cold. She politely asked the cab driver to wait and he replied with a swift middle finger and drove off immediately. She rolled her eyes and sighed, but jogged across the street and toward the homeless man. She wasn't one to judge, but he had no shoes and his clothes were wretched- both in condition and smell. She tried to close the space between them without startling him. The way he'd looked at her yesterday gave her the impression that he was absolutely terrified of people in general. Plus, he flinched away whenever he passed a pedestrian and gave everyone a wide berth. His body language was defensive with his shoulders hunched in toward his torso and his arms folded tightly across his chest. She followed him for a little while, watching in wonder as she tried to read him to the best of her abilities. She was thankful she wore quiet shoes, however, they weren't quiet enough, it seemed. After a few minutes, his back stiffened and straightened as he froze in place on the sidewalk. She wasn't expecting it and accidentally ran into him and fell on her well-padded rear.

He slowly swiveled on his feet to look at her, his face oddly expressionless, as if he expected…. Well, she wasn't sure what he expected, but it was certainly not her. His expression morphed into one of shock, recognition, and less of fear than of wariness. Before he could open his mouth, she spat out everything she wanted to say before he could run away again.

"I'm really grateful for what you did for me yesterday and I didn't have a chance to thank you and I feel really bad that you're such a good person and you don't even have shoes and god, you look so thin and I really want to help you if you'll let me and I really hope you do." It was a giant run-on sentence, but she didn't care too much about her grammar currently.

He was absolutely shocked to his core. This woman seemed to be completely different from everything he'd seen in humans until now. Could this be a trap? A trick to bring him back into Their clutches? He studied her eyes for what seemed like forever and found nothing but honesty and sympathy in them. Minion would have trusted this woman in a heartbeat, he realized. He, however, was a bit more wary without his friend to help guide him. Slowly, he extended a hand to help her to her feet, which she accepted with a smile.

"I'm Roxanne," she informed him as she stood. He panicked a bit. She would obviously expect him to give her his name but he couldn't tell her his experiment or prison numbers, though those were the only two things he'd ever been called in his life. His mind flashed back a few years when he was supposed to be writing a paper on the strong forces of quantum mechanics but instead used his paper to entertain his childish imagination (and Minion) with drawings and stories. He created a superhero on that paper- one that was a genius that could invent anything and fought the forces of evil with his robot sidekick and weapons that he himself knew how to create. They had called the superhero "Megamind." At least until They came in and saw that he'd been slacking off. From then on he'd had to use a typewriter. He didn't bother to tell them that he could rip apart the old thing and be able to draw again. It wasn't worth the hassle. With a small smile, he'd decided.

"Hi… I'm Megamind."


	3. 2014

**AN: My new motto: Quality, not quantity. Sorry this chapter is a bit short, it just kind of ended up that way. I've been really sick lately so writing has been the most exerting thing I've done for the last week.**

The newly dubbed "Megamind" wasn't foolhardy enough to trust a stranger enough to go with her to her home. Even if he had helped her, he knew They wouldn't be past setting the whole thing up. It was actually more likely than the alternative, at least in his mind. Everything They did was to test the limits of his psyche or his physiology. They would be foolish, however, to think that he would fall into such an obvious trap. The woman seemed nice enough, sure; and her eyes didn't show any malevolence, which had been something he had learned to detect after hundreds of pairs of eyes with evil shining through them, but he couldn't trust her. He couldn't trust anyone except for Minion, and he wasn't there to make this important decision. He studied Roxanne warily, but agreed to go to this "coo-fee shop" she spoke of if only for the food. No, he wouldn't let himself be there for the company, even if he was very lonely without his fishy friend. He would never be that lonely. Even when he'd been submerged in total darkness with only voices and pain to keep him company, he wasn't lonely enough to risk opening his eyes.

His eyes had been the ace up his sleeve. They'd relaxed security around him because he was blind and therefore not a threat. Something like hysterical laughter bubbled in his chest when he thought of that. They'd further pushed him toward being able to escape the day that they had minimum security on him because it was a holiday. _A holiday!_ Their most prized asset was loosely guarded because of a holiday! Their third mistake was allowing him to study whatever he desired and build the products of that knowledge. If They'd been more careful, they'd have realized that he'd studied nothing but army survival tactics, weapon construction, and high-level physics (both quantum and regular) for a couple of years. The combination seemed unlikely to yield a brainchild, but this time, They had been absolutely wrong.

So here he was, walking with a human female toward other humans and she was chatting like everything was normal.

"Don't talk much, do ya?" she chuckled, shoving her hands further into her coat pockets. He kept his head down but replied,

"I'm not exactly used to talking to people." Lord, if she knew the half of it. He'd never talked to anyone besides Minion unless he absolutely had to and most of the time they enjoyed his silence. A few years into his captivity, his ability to speak English had regressed significantly. He still had to write it, but for a while there, he could only speak his native language. To this day he still couldn't pronounce everything correctly. Then a thought bubbled up in his mind. _What year is it? How long was I really in there?" _He'd assumed he was in the facility for seven years because he had a visitor on his birthdays… But could that be completely accurate? Before he could stop himself, he asked the woman.

"What year is it?" Roxanne gave him a sideways look.

"Umm… its 2014, dude." That froze him on the sidewalk. _2014?! _That overshot his estimate by at least five years. He sat down on the pavement and curled in on himself. _Twelve years…._ He'd been in that hell hole for twelve years. Which meant he was twenty-four. This was too much for him to grasp. Roxanne knelt beside him and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder, which made him flinch violently.

"Are you okay?" She was starting to get the feeling that he was a bit stranger than she originally thought. He gazed up at her with wild eyes, breathing deeply, trying to calm himself. He compartmentalized this information for the time being and kept taking long, shaky breaths. Several people had stopped to see this unusual spectacle, which only made him more nervous. Roxanne started to recognize his "deer in the headlights" look and gave the nosy people the stink eye until he calmed himself and managed to stand, only wavering a bit.

"I-I-I'm fine," he finally muttered. He was certainly not okay, but the longer he stayed out in this cold, the worse he would get, so he resumed walking with the woman, listening to her small talk. She realized that he was a far better listener than talker, so she filled the silence and encouraged him to reply, but that little bit of news had made him go pale and quieter than before. _What year did he think it was? Why? How could someone lose track of the years? _she wondered. It would be quite some time before she found the answers, however.

They finally made it to the coffee shop, and Roxanne sat him down in the back corner while she ordered for them. She figured the more calories, the better, and bought him a large super chocolaty coffee with extra cream as well as a dozen donuts. She bought herself a black coffee and a bagel. She loved the bite of black coffee. _I take it black, like my soul,_ she would joke. When she sat down with the blue man, she could tell he was trying very hard to mind his manners despite the fact that he was ravenous. By the time she was done with her bagel and coffee, he'd eaten ten donuts and drank half of his coffee. She could tell he was really enjoying it too, by the way he visibly relaxed. She felt bad for him. He'd obviously been living under some sort of rock for a long, long time, likely just because of his physical differences. She'd known social pariahs before, but he went past all of their social impediments. He wasn't just socially awkward, no… He was afraid of people. The way he'd flinched away from her simple, comforting touch and run away after he helped her… The way his eyes went as wide as dinner plates and he folded in on himself… all were signs of being a severe hermit.

She decided that day, in that coffee shop, that she would help this homeless man and earn his trust. It would take time, she knew, but he had little else in the world and now that she had the chance to read him, she would never forget him if she didn't help him. She would always feel guilty if she didn't try. Now all she had to do was come up with a good strategy- one that wouldn't take all winter. If she couldn't earn his trust in the next month, she never would because he would die in the Michigan freeze.


	4. Trust

**AN: I've been reading about a lot of different sciency things :3 So now, of course, I have a way to use my new knowledge in a way that is going to make this story about 500x better. I'm excited just writing about how awesome I hope it turns out! :D I stayed up wayyy too long because my brain got hyped up on my ideas and I had to write at least the general direction it's going in before I could sleep. So yeah, I hope you like the new chapter and I'm pretty sure the next one will be up very soon. **

Wrapping his head around something as simple as the year should not have been more difficult than the possibility that "real" wasn't real. He'd debated his own phaneron and the possibility of solipsism as a child and had simply decided that solipsism was more difficult than believing that everything was real. After all, if everything was simply a figment of his imagination, why would he have made his own life Hell? But the fact that he'd missed five extra years… that was like kicking him in the amygdala. It practically short circuited him and it was almost all he could do to let the woman's words go in one ear and occasionally out the other. It took a while to be able to push that in the corner with solipsism and slam the door shut behind it, but once he had, he felt like he could finally hear again- just as Roxanne sat down across from him and offered him a cup of warm "coofee" and pushed a box of pastries towards him.

It was a huge leap of faith to accept what she'd given him- what if she had poisoned it or put a tracking chip in it or…? But his survival instincts took hold of him before he could overthink it too much and soon he was devouring the sweets with a voracious hunger as he listened to Roxanne talk. It was rare that he would offer input, but the few times that he had made Roxanne grin or even chuckle at his sheltered opinions. Though Megamind prided himself on his ability to read humans, he'd found himself faltering under her gaze. In all humans he'd read since arriving at The Facility, he found a select number of emotions- morbid curiosity, cruelty, rage, greediness, the love of control, and on very rare occasions, a tiny pinprick of mercy- the emotion that was supposed to be most human. He'd never read anything else since he was barely more than a toddler. This woman, however, defied all of his expectations. He couldn't read her at all because all of the emotions he'd come to know in humans were completely absent in her- except for mercy.

It was confusing, to say the least, especially since she kept coming around, looking for him, day after day. Soon their conversations became more than one-sided monologues and he found that although she wasn't quite on his intellectual level, she was much wittier and learned much faster than most human's he'd had the "privilege" of meeting. The days got colder and colder and the fourth day that she came around, Roxanne brought him shoes and a heavier coat. This required another giant leap for him- the same questions ran rampant through his mind- what if there's a hidden chip or…? But he'd unwittingly become more comfortable with her through their conversations. It was almost the end of October, and the temperatures dropped into the forties or lower every night. Although the cold was more bearable with the new coat, he still found himself shivering and wishing he could warm up by a fire. He had no idea what he would do when winter finally hit Metrocity. At least he didn't until he admitted this to Roxanne. She'd been delaying asking him to trust her enough to stay with her for the winter because, well, they'd only met two and a half weeks ago. But now, as they sat in Roxanne's favourite diner, she gave him the best puppy dog look she could and found herself graced with one of Megamind's rare smiles.

He'd been smiling more and more frequently, though the fright in his eyes never receded. It was something, at least, and she figured it would probably be a long time before she understood exactly how he'd become this way. She was just happy that he didn't look frightened when he looked at her. But a bit of hesitation showed when she offered a generous solution to the fast approaching winter.

"I have an empty guest room and I would honestly enjoy your company," she pleaded. Neither of them mentioned the likely alternative, for which Megamind was very grateful. He knew that he wouldn't be able to last the winter in his box and her offer did sound rather enticing… He studied her eyes, yet again, to see if there was anything but sincerity there. There wasn't, so he reluctantly, if only to be stubborn, agreed and nearly died of shock when Roxanne beamed at him and moved over to his bench to give him a hug. Roxanne either didn't notice or didn't care that he was frozen and unsure what to do. It felt like minutes passed, but she refused to let go until he relaxed. She felt her heart pang for him. If he was this shocked by a simple hug… he was obviously not used to any form of welcomed physical contact.

Eventually he did relax, and his mind finally pieced together that he should wrap his arms around her shoulders- which he did, though his face turned a bit purple. Roxanne decided that she would use this winter to help him with as much of his issues as he would allow- especially getting him used to hugs.

Megamind couldn't help but be a bit giddy that instead of crawling back to his box, he would be in a warm apartment with his new friend, even if he had to keep his head down to get through the lobby.

"Hi, Carlos!" Roxanne called cheerfully. Her doorman waved back, seemingly too busy to greet her properly. Roxanne didn't take it personally- Carlos was almost always busy with one project or another while he was tending the door. What neither Megamind nor Roxanne noticed, however, was how his narrowed eyes glared at their backs as they approached the elevator.

The first thing Megamind did was take a long, hot shower. It'd been way, way too long since he had any way to get clean, and the constant stream of hot water on his scarred back and achy muscles just felt like heaven. While he was doing that, Roxanne dug out her ex's clothes and managed to find some pajamas that wouldn't look ridiculous on him. She left them outside the bathroom and snuck off to find a movie to watch while they ate takeout. Roxanne was far from being a domestic. She couldn't cook or sew to save herself, which was part of the reasoning she used on Megamind to let her take them out to eat every day- usually two or three times a day, even. When he'd argued that he didn't want to feel like a mooch, she told him that if it was really that big of a problem, he could help with stuff around the house.

Once he got settled in the pajamas she rounded up for him- black, flannel, and extremely comfortable- they sat down on her couch, ate from their Chinese takeout boxes, and watched Roxanne's favourite movie, _The Fifth Element. _She'd been a little uncertain if he would like it, love it, or hate it, but she needn't have worried. He loved it, and not just because of the Diva, either. He'd only been uncomfortable at the end scene, which Roxanne endlessly teased him for. She reminded him of Minion, in a way, and it struck a chord in him that almost had him crying over his piscine friend again. When Roxanne noticed he wasn't smiling anymore, she stopped teasing him and apologized. _He isn't used to this kind of banter,_ she thought. He shook his head and his eyebrows pinched in a smile that looked more like a grimace.

"What are you saying sorry for?" he asked. "I'm not _that_ oversensitive, you know." He stuck his tongue out at her in defiance. Roxanne chuckled but wondered aloud,

"Then why did you get all serious?" Megamind blew out a long sigh and blinked slowly.

"It's a rather long story," he avoided.

"I have all night," she confronted him with an encouraging smile. He supposed that if he was trusting her enough to _live_ with her, he could trust her about Minon, but he was still a bit wary to tell her the whole story. Better to leave her out of all that mess.

"Well…."


	5. Up All Night

"Well…" he paused. How to say this without revealing everything…? "I lost touch with my brother and I just miss him, is all. He's silly and loved to tease me…"

"…and I just made you think about him," Roxanne finished, only mildly surprised that there was another blue alien out there somewhere. As if he could read her mind, he replied,

"He's not… my blood brother, though. We've just been together since, well, forever." Now that he thought about it, he couldn't remember how he met Minion…. or anything before The Facility, now that he thought about it. It was disconcerting for him to realize that he had such gaping holes in his memory. Did they mess with his brain or something? He wouldn't have put it past them if they tried to get rid of a few of his memories- some of which he wouldn't mind not remembering. "We were supposed to come here together but… his _employers _had a stranglehold on him." Megamind had a hard time trying to stay straight faced at the irony. "I haven't heard from him since." Roxanne frowned at the tone of his voice. He sounded utterly defeated- crushed, even.

"I could try to help you find him," Roxanne offered. "But tomorrow. I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted and it's pushing two am." He whipped his head around to relocate the wall clock and was surprised that it was already so late. He nodded dumbly. She couldn't really help him, but it was a nice gesture. Roxanne hugged him quickly before retreating to her room for the night. Megamind, however, was wide awake. Talking about Minion made his brain start "foaming at the mouth." So for a little while, he just moved around on the couch- hanging his legs over the red arm, then his head, dangling his feet off of the back, and once he'd exhausted all of the possible combinations he could think of and was still not tired, he sighed and shuffled around, searching for paper and a pencil. Getting things down on paper always helped him quiet his mind, whether it be in writing or drawing. He had to rifle through several drawers in the living room desk, but once he'd found his supplies, he sat down to what would end up being a very long night.

Roxanne woke with a start, sitting up in bed before she even realized she was awake. She looked around her room to see if she could tell what woke her but there was no sign of any disturbances. She snatched her dream journal off of her bedside table and flipped it open, only to realize that she couldn't remember her dream. At all- almost as if she didn't have one. She used to love her vivid dreams but recently she was lucky to even remember an emotion from a dream. Today there wasn't even that, just blank. She shook it off and put back her journal before she swung her legs out of her bed and her feet stuffed into her slippers.

She realized that Megamind was already up, despite it being seven in the morning. She stood in the doorway of the living room.

"Sheesh, dude, do you ever sleep?" she teased. He jumped a little in his seat, his pencil jumping up and off the paper. His eyes were yet again, the size of dinner plates, and she couldn't help but giggle sleepily. He had dark shadows under his eyes which tipped her off to the fact that he hadn't slept at all. After a few seconds, he visibly relaxed, if blushing a bit.

"Not when my brain is still chugging along," he replied, taking a sip of the coofee he'd managed to make while she was asleep. It wasn't quite as good as the stuff from the coofee shop, but it was still super sweet and energizing. When his body couldn't quite keep up with his brain, he found that this was the absolute best stuff on the planet to make the two meet. It sped up his brain as well, forcing it to sprint even faster and usually it would tucker out quicker, but it just wasn't working today. So he'd been drawing and drawing and drawing. There were likely five-hundred drawings on the desk or scattered on the floor around him. Roxanne chuckled and meandered into the kitchen to get some coffee. Now that she was awake, she wouldn't be able to go back to sleep. Once she had her life elixir in her greedy little hands, she came back to the living room and sat on the couch. It wasn't until then that her sleepy mind noticed all the paper. Well if she wasn't awake before, she certainly is now.

"What is all of this?" she gasped, her eyes blowing up like a pair of balloons. She only had a few papers in her fist, but all of them were so out there that she couldn't possibly hope to make sense of them.

"Ehh, just some things that were frolicking through my mind," he waved off. It wasn't unusual for him to do this sort of cramming session. Once, his arm gave out before his brain had and he'd asked Them for a wrist brace so he could keep going. He'd already drawn over four-hundred different things in the space of seven hours, but after They complied, the greedy bastards, he kept it up for another twelve hours, at which point the tendons in his writing arm had swelled up so painfully that he decided he'd learn how to draw with his other hand as well. From then on he drew with both hands at the same time and found it no more difficult than walking and talking at the same time for a human.

Roxanne set her mug down and curiously approached the desk, picking up as many papers as she could hold. Some were purely mechanic, some purely artistic. From the sheer number of papers he'd drawn of himself and a… fish? Yes, a fish, she determined. She guessed this was the "brother" he'd been talking about. It's not like fish like that existed on Earth, after all. She had to make several stacks of papers once she couldn't carry any more pages. He just kept adding to the pile until he dropped his pencil and leaned back in his chair with an exasperated sigh. It wasn't helping at all. His frustration only proved it. He needed a new outlet, which was clear, even to Roxanne. She took a long sip from her tourist mug before making a suggestion off-handedly.

"When I can't make my mind relax, I always listen to music or break out my violin." Roxanne hadn't liked it when she was little, but she was grateful to her mother now for forcing her to take lessons. She loved the sweet, singing tone to her well-worn instrument. Megamind scrunched his face up at the thought but the more he thought about it, the better it sounded.

"Would you… play it for me?" he asked bashfully, his eyes still closed as he struggled to fight back wave after wave of thoughts, only succeeding in giving himself a headache. Roxanne smiled to herself and went back to her bedroom to dig the case out of her closet. She could always reheat her coffee, after all.

**AN: Yush, next chapter Roxy will play for us :D I've been listening to classical music out the wazoo just for this one :3**


	6. Nightmares

**AN: Many of you know that some chapters come easy and others…. Not so much. This is one of the chapters that I pulled out word by word and I'm still not quite happy with- the length or content. Hopefully the next chapter won't be as much of pulling teeth as this one was.**

The first draw of her bow was strong, if a bit shaky. She hadn't played in quite some time, but her favourite song leapt to her hands like she'd played it just yesterday. She'd adapted a piano piece that sounded magnificent in the rich tone of her instrument. _Lamentations of the Night _seemed appropriate for her to play, and as she did so, Megamind watched her fingers dance across the strings and was enraptured by the emotions behind each draw of her bow, back and forth over the bridge. Each note was enhanced by the acoustics of her living room, making every pitch and tone stronger. Roxanne didn't notice anything astray until she lifted the instrument away from her and looked at Megamind. He'd fallen asleep and was now snoring softly into the couch cushion, his gangly legs dangling over the side. She smiled and put her violin away so she could get a blanket for him.

After she draped a fuzzy green throw over him and adjusted his legs so they fit on the couch with the rest of him, she took another look at the piles and piles of papers. Few of them made much sense to her, so she sorted the drawings from the schematics and ended up with a smaller stack to look at. The very first one she studied was a sketch of what looked like a younger Megamind laying on a floor, drawing, with his ankles crossed in the air and a strange looking fish in a clear hamster ball watching with a smile. Megamind was smiling, but wore clothes that looked like scrubs and had a several bandages, the biggest of which covered most of his skull. Roxanne frowned and put that drawing aside. The next one was even more shocking to her. Megamind was older in this drawing but you couldn't tell it by the way he clutched at the fish's ball. There was another bandage- this one covering his eyes, but tears streamed out from under it and his lips were pressed together hard, as if he was trying to keep them from quivering. At this point, Roxanne started wondering if she should be looking at these. She felt like she was reading his diary, his most personal thoughts.

She was too curious to put them down, though. As soon as she flipped that drawing aside, she very nearly shrieked. She had to cover her mouth so she wouldn't wake him. Her eyes watered and she got rid of it as soon as she could even move. The next one was no better, however, and soon she was just tossing drawing after drawing and she could feel her eyes getting wider and wider. These were scenes straight from nightmares and they were too realistic to keep looking at. She tossed the rest of the stack onto the desk and retreated to her bedroom so she could process the new information without disturbing the man sleeping on her couch- the one who had apparently faced real nightmares more often than she'd had ones in her sleep. Either that, or he had a morbid imagination. Somehow she couldn't see him and all his nervous innocence drawing that out of the clear blue. _Also…. It would explain a lot if… _Roxanne shuddered. She couldn't bring herself to imagine that those horrors really befell him. The most horrifying drawing to her was not the most macabre. There was a lone drawing that was mostly black of a younger Megamind…. Lying in the darkness…. With no eyes and his body limp and empty looking.

Roxanne resorted to her usual coping mechanism of taking a long hot shower to try to get her mind off of what she'd seen. The images were burnt into her mind, however, and it seemed that they wouldn't budge any time soon, even with relentless hot water turning her neck and back pink. She reached for her pink scrubbie and lathered it with soap, hoping she could scrub it all away to no avail. It wasn't until she finally shut off the water that she heard a strange sound coming from the living room. She couldn't quite tell what it was from her bathroom, so she pulled on her nightgown and wrapped herself in a black, fuzzy robe. Roxanne cautiously tiptoed out to the living room, her lips slipping into a deep frown as she got closer to the sound. Apart from a low hum that she assumed came from her appliances, soft groaning noises shuddered out of the sleeping man's mouth. She sat in a recliner next to the sofa and watched him with sympathy and sorrow in her heart for him. His face was twisted into a bitter visage, his strong brows folded in grief and his small mouth stretched in agony. It was clear that he was having a nightmare, but Roxanne didn't know how to stop it without waking him and he needed the sleep desperately.

After several long moments, she made up her mind and stretched her small palm across the space between them and gently rested it on his head. She stroked his bald crown soothingly, immediately smoothing out his features, much to her surprise. She smiled as softly as her hand touched him and only pulled away when she was almost certain his nightmare was over. Then she went back to the kitchen to reheat her coffee.


End file.
